German Bishops Send Tough Message to Paedophilic Priests

For the first time since the German Catholic Church was rocked by a series of paedophilia scandals, a four-day Bishop’s Conference in Fulda has decided to get cracking on paedophilic priests.

At the conclusion of the meeting on Thursday, the 68 bishops from dioceses all over the country came together under the chairmanship of Cardinal Lehmann and admitted for the first time to "often reacting inappropriately" in previous cases of sexual abuse in the church.

Tougher action against paedophilic priests

The bishops also decided to pursue a more intensive examination of accusations of sexual abuse in the church in the future. This would involve appointing an external ombudsman in every diocese who would serve as a contact person for victims of sexual abuse as well as suspicious priests.

Until now, each of Germany’s 27 dioceses had its own method of dealing with the problem, which most often involved immediately suspending the priests and then transferring them out of their parishes.

In addition, the clerics also decided to initiate an internal inquiry in paedophilic cases before the criminal prosecution authorities intervened. Only once sexual abuse of children and youth were proved, would the guilty priest be advised to give himself up to police officials.

Victims of sexual abuse will also be offered humanitarian, therapeutic and pastoral help in the future, and it will be mandatory for paedophilic priests to undergo therapy henceforth. The bishops also did not rule out defrocking a guilty priest in certain serious cases.

Paedophilia a sticky issue with church authorities

But despite the wide-sweeping measures, the question of paedophilia still sits uneasily with the German Catholic Church as comments by Cardinal Lehmann in Fulda showed. On Friday Cardinal Lehmann said that priests under suspicion of wrongdoing face intense public pressure to confess their deeds. At the same time he said that hurling accusations of sexual abuse at priests had almost become common-place and an excuse to hit at priests.

He said the church reckoned with unending complaints against clerics in dioceses where they weren’t popular.

"Suspicions are quickly formed, if one wants to get at a priest," Lehmann said. These people (the priests) are then "destroyed" for life, he concluded.

Another grey area for the Catholic Church in Germany is the fact that the Vatican in Rome will have the final say in each case of sexual abuse. According to the new resolutions, each serious case has to be referred to the Vatican especially if suspicions against a priest are proved true.

Lehmann made it clear that he expected dealing with directives from distant Rome to be problematic. "How that is actually going to work in reality is still not clear to me," he said.

German Catholic Church hit by scandals

Following the paedophilia scandal in the United States involving more than a hundred priests last spring, the Catholic Church in Germany too has come under intense pressure after it was hit by a string of scandals in recent months.

Numerous cases of paedophilia concerning Catholic priests have surfaced, including in Cardinal Lehmann’s own diocese in Mainz.

The revelations have caused "massive damage" to the church, said Lehmann during the opening of the conference.

Church under fire for passive aid to Nazis

The four-day bishops conference this week has not just been under pressure to do more against paedophilic priests, but has also been grappling with allegations of providing passive aid to the Nazis under Hitler’s dictatorship.

In an interview with the German magazine Stern this week, American author Daniel Goldhagen of the book Hitler’s Willing Executioners, said the Catholic Church "actively and willingly helped to push the race law by protecting access to lineage documents in the church archive," during Hitler’s reign. Goldhagen gave the interview in advance of his new book The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair.

"The church and clergy in all of Europe undisputedly carried out and supported crimes against Jews," Goldhagen says in the interview.

Germany’s Cardinal Karl Lehmann rejected the accusations, saying the church helped protect 80 percent of the 900,000 Jews that survived the Holocaust. He did regret that Pope Pius XII didn’t openly oppose the Holocaust and admitted that an anti-Semitic groundswell was still present in Germany.